Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
-
The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
-
Why Interviewing Sandy Koufax Made This Writer More Nervous Than Ever Before
Sportswriter Jeff Passan is long past the stage in his career when he feels anxious at the prospect of interviewing a famous athlete. But Sandy Koufax was different. It was a bucket list moment for Passan, the lead baseball writer for Yahoo Sports. A part of him felt as if he was back in Hebrew…
-
Finding Beauty in ‘Indecent’ — a 110-Year-Old Play Set in Jewish Brothel
Indecent By Paula Vogel Created by Paula Vogel & Rebecca Taichman Directed by Rebecca Taichman Music composed by Lisa Gutkin & Aaron Halva From the moment of its inception in 1906, Yiddish writer Sholem Asch’s play “God of Vengeance” was an object of controversy. Set in a Jewish brothel, the plot revolves around a love…
The Latest
-
Film & TV Last Surviving ‘Casablanca’ Actor Dies — Along With a Slice of Jewish History
When Madeleine Lebeau, the last surviving actress from the film “Casablanca” (1942) died earlier this month at age 92, she took with her more than film history. Her screen role as Yvonne, Humphrey Bogart’s discarded mistress, was twinned with her real-life role as the wife of French Jewish actor Marcel Dalio (1899–1983). Dalio was born…
-
Once an Obscene Scandal, a Hit Yiddish Play Returns 93 Years Later
The opening of “Indecent,” a new play by Paula Vogel co-created with director Rebecca Taichman, is reminiscent of the scene in “Inception” in which Leonardo DiCaprio takes Ellen Page through the basics of dream architecture. He escorts her through an initially recognizable world that begins inverting and contorting itself, resulting in a dreamscape created less…
-
Music Did George Gershwin Plagiarize From Broadway’s ‘Shuffle Along?’
“Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921,” the Broadway show starring Audra McDonald, opened on April 28. Its book by George C. Wolfe purports to explain how the African-American songwriter Eubie Blake encountered difficulties along the way to producing a show, “Shuffle Along,” nearly a century ago. One of the key…
-
Inspiring Rabbis: For Rabbi Darby Leigh, Growing Up Deaf Taught Jewish Inclusiveness
Rabbi Darby Leigh is one of this year’s “Inspiring Rabbis,” a group of 32 men and women who move us, and moved a congregant or colleague to nominate them for our annual roundup of spiritual leaders. Find the other 31 here. When he was growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the…
-
Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago There has been quite a lot of talk recently about the suffering of the Jews in Russia as a result of the current war. There is also, however, a different type of Jew about whom there is much less discussion. This would be the Jewish soldier. What is it like for…
-
Is Steven Spielberg the Most Sexist Director in Hollywood?
For Steven Spielberg, who has a tendency to make films concerned with various types of aliens — see: “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” War of the Worlds,” etc., etc. — there is, apparently, one kind of character who is just a bit too foreign to handle: a woman who speaks…
-
The Spirit of Sholem Aleichem Thrives in the Work of Boris Sandler
Before World War II, the town of Bălţi (in Yiddish, Belts, not to be confused with Belz in Galicia) in the Romanian, formerly Russian, province of Bessarabia, was not different from thousands of shtetls of Eastern Europe. What was exceptional, though, was that it largely retained its Jewish character during the 1950s and ’60s, when…
-
How Did Marvin Hier Become the Rabbi Who Blesses Movies?
“The Rabbi Who Can Bless Your Movie.” That was the headline in “The Hollywood Reporter’s” Oscar issue in March. And if that sounds a bit incongruous, it gets more interesting. The rabbi in question is Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its affiliated Museum of Tolerance. So you may ask,…
-
They Hunted Nazis to the Ends of the Earth
The Nazi Hunters By Andrew Nagorski Simon & Schuster, 416 pages, $30 There is a Zelig-like quality to Andrew Nagorski’s “The Nazi Hunters.” More often than not, in a saga spanning decades and continents, Nagorski has been there, interviewing the men and women pursuing the worst villains of the Holocaust. Many of the stories he…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News ‘He was a mensch’: Slain Messianic Jew remembered as bridge-builder
- 2
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 3
Opinion How anti-Israel rhetoric led to the killing of 2 in Washington, DC
- 4
Culture Ye’s antisemitism is old news, but it’s time to pay attention again
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish װי האָבן ייִדישע ליטעראַטן באַטראַכט איבערזעצונגען פֿון וועלט־ליטעראַטור אויף ייִדיש?How did Yiddish literary figures perceive the translating of world literature into Yiddish?
די נײַע אױסגאַבע באַטאָנט דעם בײַטראָג פֿון סאָװעטישע ייִדישע שרײַבער אין דער אַנטװיקלונג פֿון דער מאָדערנער ייִדישער קולטור.
-
News Will Jewish voters decide the NYC mayoral election?
-
Fast Forward Israel announces biggest West Bank settlement expansion in decades
-
Fast Forward Northern Ireland’s lone, beleaguered synagogue aims to stave off decline by engaging Christian neighbors
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
